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  • Beqanna

    COTY

    Assailant -- Year 226

    QOTY

    "But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura


    [open]  they say personality skips a generation; any!
    #1
    lost in the dark


    WELL gosh-diddly-darn if it isn’t Beqanna. I’ve been gone but we don’t know where or how I got back because apparently this place is just a big ol’ island not really connected to anywhere else? So I guess we all just sort of swim for days to arrive? Some things are better left unexplained or maybe we just call it magic and then call it a day.

    Regardless, I’m here and however I got here I’m in one semi-solid piece.

    I say semi-solid because, despite being a fully-grown boy, I look as though someone could knock me over with a harsh look. Luckily it takes a little bit more than that - otherwise my mothers would’ve killed me long ago.

    One of them did try and I’ve got a pretty cool looking scar on the side of my neck because of it but like, what are you gonna do? Sometimes your mom is a feral monster and when she sees that you’re literally just skin and bones and not another feral monster like the “chosen children” she decides to eat you instead. Like it’s my fault I crawled out of an egg looking all weird.

    Anyway, enough of that. I’ll ramble on about my harsh childhood once we get to know each other a little bit more.

    Right now I’m just sort of milling about in this big ol’ meadow. I’ve got my face in a thicket of wildflowers and I’m breathing deeply the sweet scent that they’re giving off. Spring is my favourite season but summer does just fine too. Everything is green and alive - except, I guess, for me. Oh, I’m alive - duh - but I’m a walking shadow, everything from the tip of my canine teeth to the blood in my veins is a rich black that Anish Kapoor would eat his heart out to achieve.

    There’s others around but I’m feeling a little shy, a little worried about approaching them. Aside from my mothers and my less-than-chatty siblings I’ve never actually had a conversation with anyone and I don’t know how to start it! Is “Good day” too formal? What about “what’s up my fine gentleman?” What do the kids around these parts say nowadays to get someone’s attention?

    So I just need to stand here and hope beyond hope that someone will come over and say hello to the skeleton with his nose in a bush of bright baby blue flowers who is very obviously trying not to stare at every single other horse in this meadow.

    Gotta play it cool, right?



    image from unsplash
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    #2


    l i l i a n
    i've gone crazy, couldn't you tell?
    threw stones at the stars but the whole sky fell




    It’s not fear.
    But what does she know?
    What does she know about anything?


    Uncertainty, maybe. Because she’s never been anything but alone. And her father is dead. Or gone, but she doesn’t know the difference. She sees her mother sometimes but only ever from a distance.


    Or perhaps it is fear.
    And she’s standing on the edge of a meadow and she thinks she’s been here before.


    She sees him. He’s the first thing she sees. Stark black, so thin that she can count the bars of his ribcage and each notch in the ladder of his spine. She feels something then that is neither fear nor uncertainty. It is something wicked that twists in the pit of her gut – sympathy, maybe, or sadness.


    Hello,” she says and the voice is neither warm nor beautiful. Perhaps if she had inherited more of her father’s goodness or more of her mother’s inherent badness, she might have sounded different. She might have been different.


    Are you alright?” she asks and does not think that it might be rude to so immediately draw attention to the fact that he looks as if he has not eaten in months.


    And if he’s not alright, if he lifts his head and says ‘no’, what will she do about it? What business does she have asking at all? She swallows thickly, catching her teeth on the bitter taste of self-loathing.


    daughter of kensley & anaxarete
    forgotten girl
    Reply
    #3
    lost in the dark


    It takes everything in me not to toss my head up and scream excited nothings as I hear someone approach. I almost tremble with the effort but I manage, at least, to keep my head in the bush.

    Because I have no idea what to do next. Was this a mistake? Should I have just crawled into a hole and died? Would that have been easier than surviving this coming conversation and having to figure out how to put one word in front of another?

    Thankfully, blessedly, whoever-this-is speaks and saves me from coming up with something on my own.

    The question she asks is rather a loaded one but I think she means it in a shallow sense and not a ‘are you okay you look like you grew up in a dysfunctional family and have some serious emotional trauma because of it’ kind of way.

    Instead of answering truthfully I’ll just have some fun instead. “I am not.” I say without taking my mouth out of the flowers, but I do pause and twist a little bit so I can look up at her. She seems nice - she’s got a good face. Which, well, basically just means she’s got a better face than I do. It’s not all hollow with a sort of hooked nose that’s meant for tearing into the flesh of the deer and rabbits I eat to survive.

    Right now, though, my sharp teeth are being used for another purpose. I tear off a flower, giving it as long of a stem as I can, and then when I stand it dangles from my mouth. “But now I am!” I gesture with my head, lowering it, and nod towards her trying to be like ‘hey do the same’. “This colour suits you.” I mumble around the stem, and I’m trying to smile - I hope that the depths of my midnight black eyes shine a little brighter.

    I hope that, for the moment, I don't look like a monster but like a boy, standing in front of a girl, trying to make his first friend in thirty-some-what years.

    If she’ll let me, I’ll drop the vibrant flower on the top of her head so the little bloom peeks out in front of her ear.

    It’ll fall off as soon as she moves but, you know, that’s a problem for future us!



    image from unsplash


    @[lilian]
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    #4


    l i l i a n
    i've never cared for anyone so much
    i was born with a bomb inside my gut




    There is nothing unique about her.
    Nothing coy. She is not the type to bat her lashes or tilt her head or whisper soft and sultry.
    There is nothing spectacular about the drab color of her. Like mud, she thinks.

    She is neither mad nor perfectly sane, she thinks.
    If the universe had somehow worked out how to create a perfect equilibrium between her mother and her father, she is it. What a perfectly ordinary thing she is.
    But he’s looking at her as if she has fully arrested his attention. Not simply with her impulsive query but with the matter of her existence. 

    Perhaps she has grown accustomed to being shirked. Maybe that is why heat pools in her cheeks and she has to look away, confronted quite suddenly by an answer she had not prepared for. Just as she suspected, there is nothing she can do about it. She cannot even force her mouth into a pointed frown and offer him her sympathy because it’s not worth anything to begin with.

    There is not much that startles her anymore. So, when he lifts his head and she sees – without any uncertainty – that there is something about him quite different than her, she does not balk. Her attention is drawn rather promptly from his mouth to the vibrant color of the flower caught between his teeth. And what a lovely color it is. 

    It is not until he ducks his head and gestures for her to do the same that she feels the first splintering, unsteady legs of her uncertainty. She blinks once and then obliges. The flower settles, its stem catching in her forelock, so that when she lifts her head it shifts but does not fall. Being that she is so wholly unaccustomed to being the object of anyone’s attention, she does not think to worry that it might look comical, dangling between her eyes.

    My name is Lilian,” she says for no real reason in particular. Just because it felt nice to say it, for once.
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    #5
    lost in the dark


    To say that I am thrilled when the flower doesn’t (completely) fall and when she doesn’t shake it off of her head would be an understatement. My heart flies to the moon in that moment and dances around in space for a few moments before coming back down to earth.

    I think I’m going to like this one. She can stay.

    If there’s something comical about the way it is hanging between her eyes, I don’t know enough to notice it either - I’m too busy being rather proud of myself for picking such a nice colour. Or, at least, that’s what I’m focusing on until she speaks again. There’s a part of me (much bigger than I’d care to admit) that expects any words coming my way to be laced with some venom, or along the same lines as her initial question towards me.

    But her name is a much welcomed change of pace it almost knocks the wind out of me.

    The sun would have nothing on my smile if I could adequately let it shine in that moment. There’s only so much I can do with what I’ve been given, but those coal-black eyes do sparkle a little something extra at the introduction. “Hello Lilian!” When was the last time I learned someone’s name? My next words are spoken in quick excitement. Look at us, just two totally normal, not-damaged-at-all horses meeting in a totally normal way. “It’s wonderful to meet you, I’m Velkan.” There’s a short moment where my brain stalls out and I’m not really sure what to do now. When was the last time I got this far in a conversation? What are you supposed to ask someone? Where they live??? That seems to personal. We just met after all.

    So, instead, I nod my head towards the bushes of wildflowers near our hooves. “Tell me Lilian, which one of these do you think would suit me?”


    image from unsplash


    @[lilian]
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    #6


    l i l i a n
    i've never cared for anyone so much
    i was born with a bomb inside my gut



    He smiles and it shifts something vital in that gaping cavern of her chest.
    It stirs something at the corners of her mouth so that she’s almost smiling, too.
    But even given the strange configuration of his face, his is more convincing.

    She decides that she likes his smile and the way his light shines from the very center of him. She likes that he makes no attempt to smother his delight. It’s refreshing, she decides, after years spent skirting past all those creatures who kept their eyes downcast and their mouths decidedly stagnant. She is one of them, she thinks, and wonders what it might take to turn herself into someone who more closely resembles him. She wonders what it might be like to feel such unfettered enthusiasm.

    Her name sounds different coming out of his mouth. The only other tongue that had taken its shape had belonged to her father and he’s been gone so long now that she cannot remember the sound of his voice. 

    Her smile deepens, ties up the corners of her mouth when he shares his name in turn. “Velkan,” she echoes, testing the shape of it. She likes the way it cuts a crease down the center of her tongue. She tilts her perfectly ordinary head with his question. 

    Her focus alights then on the flowers. She has never paid them much mind, certainly has never poured her whole soul into them the way he seems to. She deliberates a long moment, her gaze flitting between the long-stemmed things and the stark black color of him. And then she dips her head and gingerly, just as carefully as he had though noticeably more clumsy, takes up the brightest yellow flower she can find in the immediate vicinity. 

    She does not tuck it into his forelock, for she does not believe herself capable of fitting her mouth into the space between his antlers. So, she draws herself nearer to his side and tucks it into his mane. She does not allow herself to linger, immediately casts herself away from him.

    It’s bright,” she says by way of explanation, “like you.

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    #7
    lost in the dark


    I wasn’t sure whether Lilian would actually play along, but I’m delighted that she takes the request seriously and turns her attention on the pocket of wildflowers. A day spent picking flowers is a very good day, if you ask me.

    And she picks such a good one too - Yellow!!

    To say I’m just tickled-me-pink with joy at the colour she picks out (I guess tickle-me-yellowed?) would be an understatement. I mean, anything that Lilian picked out for me would have been perfect - let’s be honest - but that yellow? Oh yeah. It’s sunshine and happiness and everything that I want in my life.

    I stand very still when she moves closer, placing the flower gently in my mane, and - though I’m sad by how fast she moves back away - I’m still beaming with absolute adoration for this new friend of mine. “I love it!” And I know in that exact moment that I’m going to try to keep this precious yellow flower in my mane for as long as possible. Walking super slow, backtracking to pick it up if I drop it and all of that.

    “I like you, Lilian.” I state simply - in a breezy tone that one would be commenting on the weather with, because it’s just that matter-of-fact for me, and I’d be grinning from ear-to-ear if that was a) possible for a horse and b) not the most terrifying image of a horse you’ve ever tried to imagine.

    Or, I guess, can’t imagine if you’re someone who can’t actually visualize what’s happening here.

    But you get the point anyway.

    “What do you say we go find some more flowers? I’m sure there’s more around here.” I think we both need more flowers in our lives, and today’s going to be the day where we catch up on all the ones we’ve missed out on.



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    @[lilian]
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    #8


    l i l i a n
    i've never cared for anyone so much
    i was born with a bomb inside my gut



    She has not smiled so much since the last time she saw her father, so many years ago now that she can barely remember the shape of his face.
    It makes her cheeks ache but the ache delights her.
    How thrilling it is to have a reason at all to smile.
    How thrilling it is to have a friend.

    I like you, too,” she says and it surprises her to find that she does not immediately flush with heat. She does not tremble with embarrassment. She does not look away for fear that her admission might be met with some form of rejection.

    She just goes on watching him with that same smile that makes her cheeks ache.
    She might have laughed, too, if she wasn’t certain that it would come out sounding like rust.

    His invitation catches her thoroughly off-guard and her smile slips off-center. She blinks at him, shifting her focus from his face to the yellow flower tucked away into the tangles of his mane and then back again. A beat of silence pulses between them before she finally nods.

    Okay,” she murmurs. She takes one cautious step, pausing briefly to ensure that he’s following before setting off with purpose. She scans the meadow, stops short to gingerly pluck a brilliant purple flower and nestles this one into his mane, too. She does not hesitate this time, perhaps emboldened by his apparent want for her company.

    Are you from Beqanna?” she asks as they fall into step again.
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    #9
    lost in the dark


    You know what’s a wonderful feeling? What’s so wonderful that the word wonderful just sort of pales in comparison to it? What’s so wonderful that you’re just over the moon and suffocating in space but it’s okay because it’s all just so wonderful?

    Making a friend.

    Now it might just be my less-than-stellar upbringing but Lilian telling me that she likes me too almost wipes out my knees and turns me into a puddle – which wouldn’t take much considering there’s next to no fat on these bones and just a gentle tap would likely knock me over. And making a friend is the emotional equivalent to being slammed with a tree right in the face.

    But in a good way!

    I almost thing I lose her with my invitation, maybe inviting her to go find other flowers was weird? But she accepts so it’s fine. I’m quick to follow her, moving so that I’m walking in pace with her. I stop when she does, and I’m illuminated with a smile as she places a bright purple flower into my mane.

    “I am! I was born… well, before everything got all jumbled up and confusing. I think I was born in the mountains near this funky place called the ‘Forsaken Valley’, which is quite the name, I know. After that…” I pause, reaching down to pick up a periwinkle-blue flower and adorn Lilian with it. My smile isn’t so bright right now, it’s hard to smile when I’m recounting my history even though Lilian didn’t strictly ask for my life story. She’s getting it, or the short-version of it anyway, even though I don’t like thinking about it.

    But focusing on the flower that I give to Lilian helps. “My mothers were pretty... well...” And I gesture to myself with a quick jerk of the head, thinking it might go without saying what kind of parents could great something like me - but I say the word anyway. “monstrous... so I wandered off by myself and left Beqanna for a few years. But this place kind of draws you back in.”  I smile then, smaller than before but warm and genuine all the same. The past still stings but I think, maybe, it can't hurt me while I'm with a friend.

    “What about you?”




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    @[lilian] once I started I couldn't stop so here you go
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